The largest street protests in Brazil’s history, lasting three weeks, resulted in an unprecedented electoral turnaround that had been deemed almost impossible by virtually all analysts.

[Originally published in Portuguese at brasilcomunista.org]

Lula finished the first round 2.2 million votes behind Flávio Bolsonaro. In the second round, Lula finished 4.4 million votes ahead, even though Flávio Bolsonaro had increased his own vote tally by 3.7 million. Lula secured 10.4 million more votes in the second round, achieving 64.2 million votes, the highest vote tally in Brazilian history.

Millions of young people and workers took to the streets immediately after the first round, and this radically changed the political situation. It was the working masses on the streets who defeated Bolsonaro—Trump’s candidate, the candidate of the so-called “financial markets,” the candidate of the American Big Tech companies, of the major private Brazilian media outlets, and of the majority of the national bourgeoisie.

“Lula’s army”

Many bourgeois analysts have sought to explain this spectacular electoral turnaround through a digital initiative known as the ‘Lula Army’.

Shortly after Lula’s defeat in the first round, federal MP André Janones, from the Rede Sustentabilidade (REDE) party, set up a WhatsApp channel under this name and began recruiting “soldiers.” Every day he would assign a mission to his followers. In most cases, the mission consisted in recruiting new soldiers—that is, attracting new followers to the WhatsApp channel—with ever higher targets. Within three days, the channel had two million followers and, by the end of three weeks, 10.8 million followers.

Janones posted text and audio messages on this channel, shared videos, and demanded military-style obedience from his followers when ordering them to engage with videos on other social media platforms, particularly Instagram. This led the pro-Bolsonaro team to request that the electoral court ban Janones’s WhatsApp channel, claiming that digital activists were being made to act like robots.

Federal MP Nikolas Ferreira, from Bolsonaro’s PL, set up a similar channel, “Tropa do Flávio,” which reached two million followers.

The actions of Janones’s group certainly had a significant impact on the level of engagement with content in favour of Lula and against Flávio Bolsonaro. However, this was definitely not the decisive factor in the electoral turnaround.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the first round there was no militant campaigning on the streets. Lula’s official campaign failed to inspire anyone. Lula’s supporters were generally silent; they were ashamed to say they would vote for him. They did not wear stickers, did not declare their vote, and preferred to avoid political discussion.

In the second-round campaign, however, crowds gathered in the streets, waving flags and proclaiming to the four winds that they would vote for Lula. They sparked political debate in every setting, at every opportunity!

Thousands of young people made a point of accompanying their grandparents and great-grandparents to vote in the second round, often having to carry those with mobility difficulties!

Quilombola, riverside, and indigenous communities overcame all transport difficulties in hard-to-reach areas to turn out en masse to vote. From the evening before, bus stations in the northeast were packed with people who needed to travel to cast their votes the next day.

But Lula’s campaign did not benefit solely from the fall in abstentions (from 33.4 million in the first round to 30.5 million in the second) and the reduced number of blank or spoilt votes (from 5.9 million in the first round to 4.1 million in the second). He also secured around 5.5 million votes from those who had voted for right-wing candidates in the first round.

This enthusiasm, the willingness to switch votes, and to make an effort and sacrifices to go out and vote in the second round were all a direct result of the huge mobilization of the masses, initiated and driven by young people. Two million in Rio de Janeiro, over a million in São Paulo and hundreds of thousands across Brazil took to the streets spontaneously, without being called upon by either Lula or Janones.

Apparently, Lula and the general of his “army” feared unleashing forces they could not control. Janones never once used his powerful channel, with its millions of “soldiers,” to publicize the dates, times, and locations of the street demonstrations.

The government’s policy and the politics of the streets

At first glance, to those viewing from a distance, it may seem that the large street demonstrations were an expression of unconditional support for the government’s policy. But this is far from capturing what actually happened.

Right up until the first round of the elections, with the masses passive, any candidate who opposed Lula would have been capable of defeating him. Flávio Bolsonaro presented himself as the most “anti-Lula” of all the options. But even the self-help writer, Augusto Cury, emerged as a possible winner against Lula in a hypothetical second round, according to opinion polls.

Lula governed for four years with an economic policy that totally favoured parasitic rent seeking at the expense of welfare spending. For example, he is maintaining the new spending cap, which already threatens next year’s minimum funding levels for health and education. He pushed ahead with privatisations and did not reverse the counterreforms of previous governments.

When there was a significant mobilization calling for an end to the 6×1 work week in 2024, he chose to ignore the demands of the working class. When he had the opportunity to establish a state-owned rare-earths company (Terrabras), he refused and instead regulated the exploitation of critical minerals by foreign companies.

Although official figures show low levels of inflation and unemployment, the fact is that household debt has risen, and it is becoming increasingly unaffordable to fill one’s cart at the supermarket. Meanwhile, working hours are becoming gruelling. Young people with university qualifications find themselves forced to work for platforms such as Uber, 99taxi, iFood, etc., because of a lack of skilled job opportunities.

This, combined with the crisis of the bourgeois republic (which we have explained elsewhere) and Lula’s insistence on positioning himself as the defender of the rotten institutions of bourgeois democracy, has led to a high level of dissatisfaction. In the absence of a radical left-wing alternative, this has found expression in massive support for the far-right demagoguery of Bolsonarism.

Lula’s first-round campaign presented his policies over the last four years as the best possible. It argued that everything was going very well and that the same course should be continued. They even went so far as to bet on victory in the first round (Lula would have had to obtain more than 50% of the valid votes). This approach led to defeat.

The campaign imposed by the streets in the second round highlighted that the government was not doing well, that much needed to change, but that allowing the far-right Bolsonarists to return to power would only make matters worse. It was necessary to elect Lula to defeat Bolsonaro, but also to organise the struggle to build an alternative to the left of Lula in the coming period. This approach led to victory.

This line was the same one that we at Brasil Comunista had been advocating throughout the first-round campaign, through three slogans:

• Defeat Bolsonarism.
• Cast a critical vote for Lula.
• Build a communist alternative!

“Us against them”

As soon as the first-round votes had been counted—confirming a significant rise of the far right in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, as well as Flávio Bolsonaro’s surprising lead over Lula—broad sections of the bourgeoisie, imagining Flávio’s victory in the second round, started preparing to build bridges with their likely new political representative.

Financial markets reacted with a rise in the value of São Paulo’s stock exchange, leading to a fall in the value of the dollar. Flávio Bolsonaro was already discussing who his ministers would be and what changes he would make to the constitution.

Even on the eve of the first round, Lula himself realised that he would have to take a more radical stance or face defeat. He banned betting and threw all his weight behind passing the constitutional amendment to end the 6×1 work week through the Senate. Following his defeat in the first round, he promised free public transport at weekends.

On October 16, from the top of a sound truck in Ipatinga, a medium-sized industrial town in Minas Gerais, Lula gave a speech reminiscent of the Lula of the 1980s.

He denounced the fact that, on that very same day, TV Globo’s management had had lunch with Flávio Bolsonaro behind closed doors, just a few hours before Globo was due to interview him. The day before, Lula had been interviewed by Globo and had to face a barrage of questions from the journalists.

Lula continued his speech to the crowd filling the streets of Ipatinga, saying: “Globo is certainly angry with me because I put an end to the betting shops and Globo had one. Globo is certainly angry with me because we approved the end of the 6×1 workweek!” He concluded that Globo no longer deserved his trust.

He went on to say:

We now have to stand up against the American flag, we have to stand up to President Trump, we have to stand up to President Milei, we have to stand up to the bald bloke who robbed the INSS, we have to stand up to Vorcaro, who stole billions, we have to stand up to the far right. On my side I only have the Brazilian people, and we are going to win.

Lula resorted to “us versus them” rhetoric, because he realized it would connect with the radicalization permeating the streets.

In his victory speech, following the second round result, Lula said he would change the “way of governing” to make more room for popular participation, particularly among young people. These are empty promises which are no longer taken seriously by the large sections of the population who were out on the streets.

“Jones Manoel 2030”

In the streets taken over by working-class youth in cities across Brazil, one could see placards with slogans like “Lula 2026, Jones 2030”, or “Jones for President 2030.” Shortly after Lula’s victory, numerous posts and memes on social media read: “Now that we’ve secured Lula’s victory, I can start campaigning for my real president: Jones Manoel”; “Bolsonaro defeated. Next mission: Jones for President”; “I voted for ‘L’ in 2026, I’ll vote for ‘J’ in 2030”, and so on.

Jones Manoel was elected as a federal deputy with almost 250,000 votes in Pernambuco, where 7.2 million people were eligible to vote. He was the second-most voted-for candidate, trailing only the main candidate of the Pernambuco bourgeoisie.

By way of comparison, in the state of São Paulo there were 34.1 million eligible voters. Jones’s share of the vote would correspond to around 1.2 million votes in an electorate the size of São Paulo’s. He achieved this whilst openly presenting himself as a communist, in defense of revolution in Brazil.

The candidates from the Radical Left Caucus—a group spearheaded by Jones Manoel and other figures such as Sâmia Bomfim, Glauber Braga, and Fernanda Melchionna—secured almost two million votes across Brazil.

These spontaneous expressions of support for the idea of electing a communist as president of the Republic in 2030 are an expression of the degree of radicalism developing among this new generation of protesters.

In this sense, our slogan, emphasizing the need to “build a communist alternative,” alongside our support for Jones Manoel’s candidacy and the other candidates from the Radical Left Parliamentary Group, enabled us to connect with the most radicalized sections of the mass movement that has erupted on the streets.

This explains the avalanche of applications to join ICR-Brazil in recent weeks. We have already received more than 3,000 applications for membership since the results of the first round were announced.

Defeated, the far right maneuvers

It is difficult to predict precisely what will happen next, because the elections have only just ended and the developments have been numerous and turbulent. But what can we say based on the first three days following the second round?

On the one hand, we have Flávio Bolsonaro’s maneuvers: he first said he would seek to have the elections annulled, then backtracked and said he would seek to have the Lula-Alckmin ticket disqualified.

He declared that he would not leave the country and would lead the opposition to the Lula government. He then fled the country, after having his passport seized by the Federal Police precisely to prevent him from fleeing, as he was under investigation for various crimes.

Finally, he reappeared on American soil, where he published a “letter to the Brazilian people” in which he proclaimed himself the “true president-elect”—evidently supported by the Trump administration. A few minutes later, he published a new version of the letter in which he altered his self-proclamation to “Leader of Brazil.” All this took place less than 72 hours after the election results were announced!

Lucas Pavanato, a pro-Bolsonaro MP elected in São Paulo with over three million votes, even called for demonstrations to protest alleged electoral fraud in the second round. The rallies were subsequently canceled. Trump has not yet formally recognized Lula’s victory.

Given their many erratic moves, it is difficult to predict what the next steps will be for Flávio, the far right and the Trump administration. The first version of the letter released by Flávio on American soil suggested a plan similar to that of Juan Guaidó (who proclaimed himself president of Venezuela). But there is no way of knowing what is going on in the troubled minds of Trump, Marco Rubio, and the Bolsonaro brothers.

One thing is certain: any plan they had to challenge the election result by calling for demonstrations or actions similar to what occurred in front of military barracks at the end of 2022—which led to the mobs of January 8, 2023 in Brasília—has been thwarted by the mass mobilization of young people and the working class in the demonstrations preceding the second round, and at the celebration on Avenida Paulista on the evening of October 25.

These political representatives of the bourgeoisie are terrified of the masses taking to the streets.

What next?

The phenomenon of large-scale demonstrations against the far right has not come to an end. In the city of São Paulo, for example, spontaneous demonstrations were called under the slogan “Fora Nunes” (“Nunes Out”). Ricardo Nunes is the pro-Bolsonaro mayor of São Paulo, who organised the reduction in the number of buses available on election day. In the first round, Lula defeated Flávio in São Paulo city with 46.6% of valid votes against 42.1%!

Will demonstrations be organised in other cities where the same kind of sabotage took place at the hands of pro-Bolsonaro local councils and private bus companies?

New groups are springing up on social media, made up of young people and workers seeking to organize themselves to remain mobilised. A sense that it is necessary to remain on high alert against any threat from Trump and Flávio Bolsonaro pervades all the youth who took to the streets over the previous three weeks.

But that is not all. Millions of young people and workers experienced a leap in consciousness last Sunday. For a whole new layer of proletarian youth who had never taken part in street demonstrations before, it became clear that when ordinary people unite in large numbers, they can change the course of events and defeat powerful enemies.

A sense of urgency to organize for a radical left-wing alternative hangs in the air. Communist ideas are becoming more widely accepted than they have been since the 1960s.

Major events can bring about radical changes in the consciousness of the masses. This is what we are seeing now in Brazil. The comeback victory against Flávio Bolsonaro was correctly understood by millions of people as the result of their own collective mass action. They have become aware of their own power, and this is extremely dangerous for the ruling class.

Lula will also have to deal with this. At the same time, the far right, now strengthened within the National Congress, will also put pressure on Lula to give in.

Lula’s room for maneuver is also limited by the crisis of capitalism. Lula will try to govern as he always has: seeking governability through broad alliances with the so-called centrão [bloc of center parties], whilst seeking to isolate the representatives of the far right. This will lead him to continue implementing policies that defend the interests of the bourgeoisie, which in turn will bring him into conflict with a working class that is now awake to the struggle, and which feels victorious.

But that is not enough. The working class needs to organize itself and prepare to mobilize, even against the Lula government’s measures. The only way to secure gains will be through pressure from the streets. That is why so many people are coming to the conclusion that it is necessary to build a communist alternative. This is excellent news for communists.

It is still difficult to say after such a short time, but we may be witnessing the beginning of a prerevolutionary situation in Brazil.

However, we must end with a warning: consciousness is not static. It ebbs and flows. Consciousness must take the form of organization in order to sustain itself and make further leaps forward. If these millions who have just experienced a leap in consciousness do not find a way to organize themselves, sooner or later their consciousness will regress.

The Brazilian working class needs a revolutionary mass communist party. It is urgent that we build it. However, building such a party in a country the size of Brazil is no simple matter. It cannot be achieved overnight.

Figures such as Jones Manoel and those who will come forward to represent the Radical Left Caucus in the coming term can play an important role in this process. But to do so, it is important to overcome illusions in the so-called “Chinese development model” and in economic theories that contradict Marxism, such as Modern Monetary Theory.

The potential embryo of the Brazilian revolutionary party is taking shape today in the form of the Brazilian section of the Revolutionary Communist International, with its newspaper Brasil Comunista, its magazine América Socialista, its social media channels, and its countless communist cells multiplying across several major cities. Thousands are already seeking to organize with us. Join this movement and let’s make our dreams a reality!